The U.of C.'s valuable lesson: Sure, Steve Bannon can speak

Students demonstrate at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in Chicago on Jan. 25, 2018. The students and other protesters are demanding that the university rescind an invitation to Steve Bannon to speak at the school. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

Students demonstrate at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in Chicago on Jan. 25, 2018. The students and other protesters are demanding that the university rescind an invitation to Steve Bannon to speak at the school. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

If business professor Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago sells tickets for his planned Steve Bannon debate, put us down for a pair at least. Why? Because it will be an interesting event with the former chief strategist to President Donald Trump. And because the U. of C. should be supported for its principled defense of free expression.

Not everyone at the university is happy Bannon, the right-wing media figure, has been invited to campus. There was a small anti-Bannon student demonstration Thursday, plus an open letter to university President Robert Zimmer from some professors offended by the invitation. Keep him away, say these objectors. He’s a bad guy. His ideas are dangerous.

If this involved practically any other college in America, we’d be concerned the administration might buckle under the protests, and concoct some reason to disinvite Bannon to preserve harmony. There’s a pattern in place, from Berkeley to DePaul and beyond, of universities squelching controversial speaker events, especially those involving people on the political right. It’s part of the larger cultural movement of trigger warnings and safe spaces that believes kids on campus have a right to be protected from ideas that offend them.

Thankfully, the U. of C. thinks differently. The school has a long tradition of valuing free speech and thought, recognizing that a university is — wait for it — a place of ideas and learning. How do you learn to analyze the world, and decide what to believe, unless you’re exposed to a diversity of opinion and thought? Even more important, what lesson do students absorb if a college bans disagreeable ideas? To always carry earmuffs? In the real world, nasty thoughts and words abound. Civilized adults cope … and respond.

Zingales, a professor at the U. of C.’s Booth School of Business, was doing his job when he invited Bannon to participate in a planned debate with an expert on the economic benefits of globalization and immigration. Zingales would be moderator. This could be Bannon’s first high-profile appearance since being ousted from his positions at the White House and Breitbart News.

No question, in our view, Bannon is a disreputable character who used Breitbart to fan the flames of white nationalism. When Trump failed to condemn neo-Nazis after the Charlottesville, Va., riot, you could see Bannon’s ugly influence. Yet this is not a reason to keep Bannon from campus. His ideas are extreme but not irrelevant. He helped run the White House. He and his political movement should be understood. That requires engaging and challenging him. A college is the perfect location, a debate the perfect forum. “The University of Chicago is deeply committed to upholding the values of academic freedom, the free expression of ideas, and the ability of faculty and students to invite the speakers of their choice,” the administration said in defense of the Bannon invite.

The students who want Bannon disinvited will learn over time the value of free expression. The professors who oppose the event are wrongheaded. Their anti-Bannon perspective is legitimate but not their logic. “His presence on campus sends a chilling message not only to students, staff, and faculty at the University, but also to the young people who attend the University of Chicago Charter School and Laboratory School and to the primarily black neighbors who surround the university,” they wrote.

That argument confuses an invitation with an endorsement. The professors should make their opinions known but recognize this is a teaching moment. Let Bannon come to the University of Chicago. Give him a respectful hearing because that’s part of the American tradition of letting the best ideas prevail. Root for him to lose the debate. If that’s not enough, organize a peaceful protest that Bannon will see, so he’ll understand you reject his opinions.

That is, meet Bannon’s speech with speech. The “cure” for repellent ideas, school President Robert Maynard Hutchins said generations ago, “lies through open discussion rather than through inhibition.”

Free expression of popular notions is easy to endorse and defend. The test comes in whether speakers can voice controversial, even repugnant ideas.